Book A Hotel Directly on Yelp With Help From Hipmunk

Think twice before visiting your stalwart trip-review site or go-to OTA for recommendations or an online booking: there’s a new—but familiar—player ready to disrupt the travel market.

Yesterday, Yelp announced a partnership with Hipmunk that is making it much more than a home for crowd-sourced restaurant reviews. Yelpers can now preview and instantly book hotels directly on Yelp.

By simply clicking the “Reserve a Room” button, users will be prompted to complete their booking info, all without leaving Yelp. The process is streamlined and straightforward: simply review, click, and confirm.

When asked about the partnership, Hipmunk representative Liz Santos said the deal was driven by “a mutual desire.”

“Yelp was looking to expand to new categories,” Santos explained. “For us, [we want to] introduce Hipmunk to new audiences.”

This powerhouse-combination of two of our favorite travel tools could be a serious threat to traditional booking engines.

More than 1,000 properties across the United States are bookable through Yelp at this time—in California's Wine Country, the Bay Area, and Phoneix, Arizona—with more added each day until a majority of Hipmunk’s inventory is live. Yelp users will have access to all of Hipmunk’s exclusive rates, and Yelp app users will have access to Hipmunk's special mobile-only rates.

Melanie Lieberman is the Editorial Projects Assistant and a member of the Trip Doctor News Team. You can follow her on twitter at @LittleWordBites.